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Sunday, November 25, 2012

Thanksgiving! We celebrated with my aunt and uncle and my cousin (and his family) at his in-law's house in Scottsdale, along with about twenty other people, half of which we'd never met before. We sat with a Navajo man and his family, and he told us this awesome story about his conversion to the gospel that involved a summer away from the reservation working on a potato farm in Driggs, Idaho, being introduced to the LDS church, then returning home and going on a 4-day spiritual quest in the mountains to find out for himself if the church was true. Fascinating. (The fact that I was eating dinner with a Native American, and that therefore my Thanksgiving was more legit than yours, was not lost on me in the moment.)

It was my birthday yesterday! I don't care what everyone else says, I love birthdays. We slept in, ate pancakes, saw a movie (Lincoln; more on that next), ate lunch at my favorite restaurant, decorated for Christmas, opened presents, and had fondue at home for dinner to celebrate the conclusion of my 27th year.

Postino (Central). You should go there.

Apparently I have worse luck at movie theaters than most people, and Lincoln was no exception. We sat in the far back; a woman in the very front row pulled her phone out about once every fifteen minutes and held it up for the entire theater to see. I was too far away to yell at her, but I did get to join the rest of the audience in yelling at the old man who loudly ANSWERED HIS PHONE during a critical moment in the film. That's not even all - some beefcake teenager in a tank top sat right next to Jon and had a 150 minute long conversation with the movie. Jon asked him to kindly stop shaking his leg partway through, as it was causing THE ENTIRE ROW to bounce. A woman nearby tuberculosis-coughed every thirty seconds, and the guy directly to my left smelled like beef jerky. I say it every time but this time I might be serious - I AM DONE WITH MOVIE THEATERS (and any places with people, in general).

At church I spent a few minutes chit-chatting with a girl that I thought maybe I could be friends with. Then I asked her what her son's name is: Diesel. I pointed her out to Jon as we pulled out of the parking lot and he recognized her husband as "that dude that said, 'If you don't vote for Mitt Romney, I don't know how you can consider yourself Mormon' during Elder's Quorum." So much for potential new friends!

Thursday, November 15, 2012

PENNY GOT INTO THE GARBAGE!!! First time EVER. Little dummy. Jon sent me a text detailing her uncharacteristic, wild binge on used Kleenex and Q-tips and her subsequent shame, and concluded it with, "Clearly we are not feeding her enough mucous or ear wax."

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

"Are you feeding the wires in now?""Owwww."[coupla times]"Last time I had a burn mark near my incision, what was that from?""Is it in my heart?""And that's abnormal?""Am I asking too many questions?""Yes!! I really really wanted to but I didn't know if I was allowed."[When Frank invited me to turn my head and watch the screen.]"Are you going to burn??""You're for sure going to burn??""Are you feeding the burner in right now?""Put me to the moon, Frank."[When the doctor replied yes to my previous question.]"Owwwww."[couple more times.]"They burned my heart!!!!!!!!!!!!!"[To Jon, as they wheeled me out of the operating room.]
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I'm sure there was a lot more, since I found an entire texted conversation I had with my friend Amber directly after the procedure that I had no recollection of until yesterday afternoon. And since this is the last I plan to write on the topic, my doctor is Dr. Michael Zawaneh at Arizona Arrhythmia Consultants in Scottsdale, and he's the best doctor ever, and he fixed my heart, and I highly recommend him for all of your cardiac ablation and electrophysiology needs.

Monday, November 12, 2012

I still feel great. Yesterday was a little eventful though; we were at my aunt and uncle’s house and as soon as I sat down at the table for lunch after proclaiming how amazing I felt (considering), I started to feel weird. Lightheaded, dizzy, shaky. My cousin’s daughter asked me to pass the salt and I fumbled it. After a few minutes of trying to act normal, I left the table to go lay on the couch and I got all cold and clammy. No nausea, though, just this weird out-of-body feeling. We scrammed out of there not too long after, and as soon as we got home Jon checked my hospital discharge papers which informed us to notify the doctor on-call immediately if I felt any lightheadedness or dizziness. I called, and it was miraculously MY doctor that was on-call, and since he’s the best and most attentive doctor EVERRR he told us to meet him at the ER to personally check me out. As in, he left the clinic and drove across town to meet us at the hospital that was closest to our apartment. Everything was totally fine; he even gave me another ultrasound and tested my blood to be sure, and everything looks great. I had food poisoning last Sunday and between that and my procedure I haven’t had much of an appetite – I’m blaming it all on lack of food. Whatever it was, it wasn’t related to my heart. And the best news is that since I met my out-of-pocket maximum last week, the ER trip was FREEEEEEEEEE. He kept apologizing for calling me to the hospital, and said, “It’s because you’re so young. I can’t take a young person’s health lightly. If you were 95, though, I probably would have told you to just go to sleep.” Oh yeah, and during the ultrasound right after my procedure (I forgot to mention this in my other post), he kept commenting on my healthy young heart and said, “Most of the hearts we see in here are all dilated and floppy.” HAHAHahaHAhHAHahHAhHahHAhhaAAaaaa

Also, my welts are less itchy but more awful-looking than ever:

Also, we had a little 13 year old girl walk/feed Penny on Thursday during the procedure, and she sent me a text afterward that said, “Hi! I got back from feeding and taking Penny out about 5 minutes ago. She did amazing! Hope the surgery went well!” and it was the most adorable thing ever, and now whenever Penny takes a dump Jon announces, “She did amazing!”

Friday, November 09, 2012

I'm cured!!! NIGHT AND DAY from last time. They were able to cause a short-lived tach attack almost immediately, and after some trial and error figured out an exact sequence of steps to take to bring one on. Something about “tickling” it in a certain place with their mapping wires, bringing my heart rate to a certain range of beats per minute artificially, elevating it to 360 beats per minute for only a second or two, then my natural arrhythmia would always take over. This was repeated for four hours while they mapped out my heart to find out the exact origins. At one point, my arrhythmia took over for an HOUR and they couldn’t get it to stop (huge change from last time, when they couldn’t start one at all!!) Frank went out and told Jon that if it didn’t stop soon, they would have to electrically cardiovert me (CLEAR!), but they didn’t end up needing to, and the doctor seemed annoyed when Jon told him Frank had even mentioned it. Poor Jon sat out there with eyes like silver dollars after that. Frank's announcement, combined with the fact that someone in another operating room had died and he witnessed the family’s grief, and he had a sort of nerve-racking time out in the waiting room.

The doctor ultimately found three points of origin for my arrhythmia – a larger one in my lower right atrium and two smaller ones in my upper left atrium – none of which were where he had previously anticipated. The three areas communicated to each other in a figure-8-like circuit, and he said the whole operating staff collectively groaned when they realized what they were dealing with; this sort of point of origin tends to move around on them as they burn, going away but then cropping up in a different spot, which is exactly what happened with mine. After chasing and burning the hell out of the larger spot, they were no longer able to bring on an attack and called it a success. Having your heart cauterized internally feels almost exactly like how you’d imagine, PS. Super uncomfortable (like extreme heartburn, go figure) despite the fact that Frank administered a delightful cocktail of Fentanyl and Versed as soon as it became certain they were definitely going to ablate.

My right atrium!

The cluster of red dots at the bottom are where they burned.

I feel GREAT. Even immediately afterward, I couldn’t believe the difference in how I felt compared to last time, and I don’t just mean my spirits (I was sort of devastated when the first surgery failed). My groin was sore, but didn’t throb and give me deadleg like it did last time – apparently last time they had to puncture three times and this time they got it right on the first attempt, so I’m sure that explains that. When the nurse helped me to stand for the first time, I got right up and shuffled around with barely any discomfort. Last time I almost passed out. The doctor was concerned that I’d have lots of heart pain, considering the amount of burning they did, but I haven’t felt anything. Still, he kept me for several more hours for observation and gave me an ultrasound to check on the swelling. My only complaint, really, has been the allergic reaction I had to the defibrillator pads.

I have another welt the same size on my chest. I slept pretty much all day today, but it’s hard to tell if that had more to do with the procedure yesterday or the copious amounts of Benadryl I’ve been taking to keep the itching at bay.

Sunday, November 04, 2012

This just made my day. Apparently these friends searched for the best (worst) authentic Utah baby names then made this video based on their findings. The outfits, the hair that keeps getting bigger and bigger, the shout-out to Rexburg....hilarious perfection. Wish I'd thought of it.

Friday, November 02, 2012

If you’re keeping track, I should be in the hospital today. But I’m not. It got rescheduled for Thursday, which was the second reschedule, and I’m sure you can imagine how I felt about it all. The first time it was, “OMG I am so sorry, I just realized the equipment isn’t even going to be in the hospital that day!!” and the second time it was, “OMGOMGOMG I am soooooo sorry, I just realized the doctor isn’t even going to be in town that day!!!!” and I was like, o__O

Anyway, so there’s that. Can we talk about Ada’s costume???

(Corinne et al. were spared the worse effects of hurricane Sandy and are in the lit portion of Manhattan. Don’t go swimming in the sewer water, guys.)

In conclusion, I changed my blog for the holidays. I’m not saying for “Christmas” because I’m a stickler about NO CHRISTMAS BEFORE THANKSGIVING, but fair isle isn’t necessarily limited to Christmas, right? It can apply to the entire holiday season? Regardless, I made the header, and I couldn’t wait, so it’s up, and if you’re one of those people who never ventures outside of Google Reader you *probably* are going to want to make an exception for this.